Joined: 18 Feb 2008
Posts: 2762
Location: " Bought a house next to Prince, now I can kick it "

everyone should also be learning more about the codex alimentarius.

go google it. weird shit.

Wed Mar 11, 2009 5:49 pm

zeem

Joined: 29 Apr 2003
Posts: 3885
Location: elsewhere

zagadka wrote: Oh yay you watched Future of Food?! Didn't the farmer's stories make you sick? The old man and his wife from Canada made me cry- I felt so bad for them. To cultivate and save your own seeds for all of those years only to have them destroyed due to a fluke.

Go Monsanto. You put hope in agro-business.

I actually watched it on your tip(via facebook).

Great movie. Seriously messed up.

Wed Mar 11, 2009 7:04 pm

Plum Puddin'

Joined: 26 May 2008
Posts: 1849
Location: Earf.

C.R.A.Z.Y wrote:codex alimentarius.

Wed Mar 11, 2009 7:51 pm

zagadkaDARK PAST HAVER

Joined: 30 Nov 2004
Posts: 4932
Location: Hous of Gaga

zeem wrote:

zagadka wrote: Oh yay you watched Future of Food?! Didn't the farmer's stories make you sick? The old man and his wife from Canada made me cry- I felt so bad for them. To cultivate and save your own seeds for all of those years only to have them destroyed due to a fluke.

Go Monsanto. You put hope in agro-business.

I actually watched it on your tip(via facebook).

Great movie. Seriously messed up.

no way, that's awesome! zeem make zaga happy!

check out underwoodgardens.com- they have all kinds of old fashioned heirloom seeds for you and your lady's green thumb pleasure. I just ordered $60 in seeds...now if only I could get out of zone 5...GAH.

i'm really excited about growing the following:

Ground Cherry:
Small, golden fruits with papery husks (like tomatillos) and a sweet-tart, slightly citrus flavor, ripen a golden-orange and store up to 3 months in their husks.

Strawberry Spinach:
Tender, fast-growing greens with a delicate flavor have a triangular shape, pleasant texture green, spiky edges and grow in pretty, open rosettes. Use them raw (good mesclun ingredient) or cooked like spinach and chard.

Wed Mar 11, 2009 9:54 pm

firefly

Joined: 27 Sep 2002
Posts: 3990
Location: Montreal

Plum Puddin' wrote:

C.R.A.Z.Y wrote:codex alimentarius.

Woah ....

Wed Mar 11, 2009 10:27 pm

C.R.A.Z.Y

Joined: 18 Feb 2008
Posts: 2762
Location: " Bought a house next to Prince, now I can kick it "

firefly wrote:

Plum Puddin' wrote:

C.R.A.Z.Y wrote:codex alimentarius.

Woah ....

well im not quite sure what to make of her take on the codex because a lot of time some of the things she says just sounds fantastically paranoid but maybe i dont know enough and she does. i am not sure if this is just the new paranoid conspiracy buzz or a real problem. a lot of people are talking about it more often.

the codex has an actual website and it is very complex. regular people are always trying to study it and figure it out.

" Codex is a food commission founded in 1963 by the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) with a self-proclaimed mission to protect the health of all consumers; however, I will discuss how the Codex Alimentarius does not care about your health, my health, and our families’ health. In fact, they don’t care about the consumer’s health at all! Codex is closely affiliated with the World Trade Organization (WTO), which has main objective of profit through global trade. I will discuss how Codex’s main objectives are to control people by controlling their food, making profit, and helping corporations, such as Monsanto, make big bucks at the expense of consumer health. "

...if you go on and read all of the article at the link above...it has some interesting ideas that are shocking if true facts.

Wed Mar 11, 2009 11:07 pm

firefly

Joined: 27 Sep 2002
Posts: 3990
Location: Montreal

C.R.A.Z.Y wrote: well im not quite sure what to make of her take on the codex because a lot of time some of the things she says just sounds fantastically paranoid but maybe i dont know enough and she does. i am not sure if this is just the new paranoid conspiracy buzz or a real problem. a lot of people are talking about it more often.

"Truth is stranger then fiction" is a conspiracy catch phrase but it's true.

What I really want to know about (and this is where the real out there conspiracy comes from) is about the vitamins bill that was past making most nutrients illegal.

Here what she says in the 3rd clip:

Wed Mar 11, 2009 11:14 pm

redball

Joined: 12 May 2006
Posts: 6878
Location: Northern New Jersey

Quote:

Woah ....

That woman needs to realize that talking like a crackpot doesn't help your case. HARMonize! She's so proud of herself over that one. I can hear the eyes roll. It's no wonder only a third of the viewers make it to the last one.

I'll check out Crazy's links tomorrow. Ironic that someone with that user name holds more credibility with me than this woman.

Also, I just wanted to note to Embryo that the inferred intent of a bill goes a long way to how it is used. That's what the argument is here. Can we deduce that the intent is to use this against farmer's markets? I don't know the answer to that, but if that is the case then you can be sure it will be used in that way. If the bill's sponsors go on the record declaring that the bill won't be used as such then it won't likely survive the first challenge.

Wed Mar 11, 2009 11:21 pm

C.R.A.Z.Y

Joined: 18 Feb 2008
Posts: 2762
Location: " Bought a house next to Prince, now I can kick it "

i worry about food a lot.

not much of the negative stuff on the codex comes from credible sources so i just watch it all and try to separate the wheat from the chaff. a lot of people think it's part of some new world order style effort to starve 90 percent of the world to death by a certain year. probably 1012. ha.

i dunno. some of the more logical protests have more reason to them and i can see where some of the hate comes from. a lot of haters of the codex think it is just a crooked handshake deal to benefit the pockets of the pill companies and monsanto. that is more logical to me then the world domination angle

Wed Mar 11, 2009 11:26 pm

firefly

Joined: 27 Sep 2002
Posts: 3990
Location: Montreal

Yeah, I know what you mean about the world domination stuff. But if they're connected to I G Farben then who knows. They seemed to have an interest in world domination when they were supporting Hitler.

Monsanto has been into some shady shit over the years, but we're going to see more and more of this kind of thing as the years pass -- pandemic and control of foodborne illness are only two issues where we'll be dealing with it.

The Jack in the Box deaths were over 15 years ago, and I still can't get some restaurants to serve me a medium rare hamburger. But that's meat, and The Jungle is 100 years old and stories about hot-dogs that are 2% rat or human fingers in Wendy's chili are just a part of our culture. Even people who eat meat every day are a little bit afraid of it. Fruits and vegetables, though? You can't expect Americans to go for months afraid of tomatoes and peanut butter without this kind of legislation getting introduced. Just like you can't expect Americans to be afraid of Chinese-manufactured toothpaste without heads rolling. Actual heads, of actual factory managers. We take so many things for granted about the food we eat, the products we use every day. We will attack anything at all that threatens our trust in that supply chain. This isn't good, and it isn't right, but it's the world we live in.

I also generally disagree with the argument that this kind of record-keeping is inherently and unacceptably burdensome. There's a lot of 20th century thinking in the criticisms here. Making it acceptably easy for farmers to manage these requirements is ultimately an engineering problem, and not even an especially hard one; we're not (or shouldn't be) talking about 100-page IRS-style forms -- we should be talking about things like 3-cents-for-a-hundred RFID tags dropped into a crate of vegetables, 2D barcodes generated and decoded using free government-provided software, etc. UPS and FedEx were doing a decent job of that with essentially1980s technology, and barring the occasional package disappearing in "Cach, Illinois" that shit pretty much just works. There's no reason we should expect these documentation requirements to take any more time to deal with than waybill paperwork, and a lot of good reasons to expect that it will be easier.

This kind of call to action is full of a lot of distrust of large corporations and government bureaucracy, and while those things have plenty of history worth our fear, the discussion is generally pretty light on advancement of viable alternatives. The opednews.com article at least talks about a philosophy favoring a closer and more respectful relationship with the food we eat, and the people who produce it, but too often the opposition reads a lot more like fear-mongering than earnest debate about solutions to real problems.

Taking more responsibility for understanding where your food came from and who made it is a good thing. People who shop at farmer's markets are ahead of the game there, in a lot of ways. That's not going to change even if this legislation does create the worst-case scenario of a byzantine bureaucracy that kills those markets nationwide. People will maintain those relationships with local farmers, even if it means creating the same kinds of workarounds for the "Food Safety Administration" that we already have for the USDA--things like DIY slaughterhouses:
http://www.citypages.com/2009-02-04/restaurants/long-cheng-livestock-market-slays-your-meal-in-front-of-you/

Wed Mar 11, 2009 11:43 pm

Scottie

Joined: 18 Jul 2003
Posts: 2829

Mark I agree with you in principal but HR 875 goes way overboard.

Besides the issues of intrastate commerce and others touched on already the bill is a gift for factory farmers. The National Animal Identification System will now have the federal government involved in raising food for home consumption.

Hazard analysis and preventive controls: Requires all facilities to have in place preventive plans to address identified hazards and prevent adulteration, and gives FDA access to these plans and relevant documentation.

Access to records: Expands FDA access to records in a food emergency.
Third party labs and audits: Allows FDA to recognize laboratory accreditation bodies to ensure U.S. food testing labs meet high quality standards and requires food testing performed by these labs to be reported to FDA. Allows FDA to enable qualified 3rd parties to certify that foreign food facilities comply with U.S. food safety standards.

Imports: Requires importers to verify the safety of foreign suppliers and imported food. Allows FDA to require certification for high-risk foods, and to deny entry to a food that lacks certification or that is from a foreign facility that has refused U.S. inspectors.
Improves Our Capacity to Detect and Respond to Food-borne Illness Outbreaks

Inspection – Increases FDA inspections at all food facilities, including annual inspections of high-risk facilities and inspections of other facilities at least once every four years.

Traceability – Requires the Secretary of HHS to establish a pilot project to test and evaluate new methods for rapidly and effectively tracking/tracing fruits and vegetables in the event of a food-borne illness outbreak.
Mandatory Recall – Gives FDA the authority to order a mandatory recall of a food product when a company fails to voluntarily recall the product upon FDA’s request.

Suspension of Registration – Empowers FDA to suspend a food facility’s registration if there is a reasonable probability that food from the facility will cause serious adverse health consequences or death.

Enhances U.S. Food Defense Capabilities – Directs FDA to help food companies protect their products from intentional contamination and calls for a national strategy to protect our food supply from terrorist threats and rapidly respond to food emergencies.

There are a handful of other bills floating around the house some include the NAIS others are more along the line of Durbin's. But looking at the list of co-sponsors (Edward Kennedy, Christopher Dodd, Richard Burr, Lamara Alexander...), I suspect what will end up being passed will be closely resembling S. 510

Thu Mar 12, 2009 7:17 am

shambhala

Joined: 25 Jul 2002
Posts: 6305
Location: the barber of hard truths

There is no justification for forcing small farmers, many of whom distrust the government for good reason, to subject themselves to what I'm sure will be a byzantine bureaucratic process to sell their wares on the road. That is a serious violation of their freedom, in my opinion, and gives immense benefits to large business looking to consolidate food production. Let's see what the final legislation looks like and then we can talk. I am deeply suspicious of this bill.

Thu Mar 12, 2009 9:17 am

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